Mini S ICE Vs EV operating costs.

If I exclude the cost of insurance, I am about $0.015/mile with solar PV.

 

Charging at home will absolutely favor electric but I have seen many DCFC vs gas comparisons (probably sponsored stuff).

At any rate, my R53 colleagues are having a really rough time...

 

I find it such a nuisance — and so anachronistic — when I have to gas up my wife’s Subaru. She’s been averaging ~9 l/100 km all winter, at ~$1.60/l for regular, or ~14.4¢/km. Since the beginning of November (we’ll call that the start of “winter”), I’ve added 3184 km to the SE. I added 855 kWh at home at just under 5.5¢/kWh, and 81 kWh on the road at what I’ll round to 50¢/kWh. That puts my (rough) energy cost for the SE at 2.75¢ per kilometre.

 

And yes, the rough math for my usage suggests that charging on the road costs ten times as much as charging at home (at the rates I pay). YMMV

 

I need to redo my roof, and I will be looking at costing out a reasonably sized hybrid solar system (grid-tied + storage). At the low rates I currently pay, the ROI time is ludicrously long here, but I’d be doing it for a bit more independence as well as to be slightly more eco-responsible. During the recent ice storm, many of my neighbours had small gas generators going 24/7, and they probably emitted more atmospheric toxins in those couple of days than I have all year.

 

Yeah I thought about having backup enabled for my solar + battery system but I decided to wait until V2G. Electricity is about $0.38CAD/kWh over here!

 

Some interesting thoughts on at-home solar:

 

Ouch! 10x?!?!

Around here DCFC charging is roughly 2.5x the cost of flat rate home charging.

We’ve used 1,062 kWh according to our smart EVSE and covered 4,600 miles.

We’re on a free at night plan so it’s cost us $0, but if we were on our old flat rate plan it would have cost us $143.

If we could not charge at home we would have spent $382 in public DC fast charging.

At 30mpg average a gas Cooper S would have cost us cost us $540 at $3.50 per gallon for premium here in Dallas.

 

Well, yeah, I said it was “for my usage.” As seen above, I used just a little under 1/10 the electricity on the road as I did at home, while conversely, the rough math shows that I pay roughly 10 times as much per kilowatt hour at public DC stations as I do at home. If I were paying a domestic utility rate more in line with what the average American pays, it would probably be only around two or three times as much to charge at a public station.

 

We didn't do battery backup when we did panels a few years ago. It adds another $10k or so, and we rarely lose power as it is, so it hardly seems worth it.

 

The way the systems are set up these days it’s more for load-balancing. The house draws from the battery before drawing from the grid, so instead of all that excess energy being pumped to the grid during the day, it is now actually making sure the battery is topped up first. In the evening (or during bad weather) the house would draw from the battery before asking for more from the grid, right when there is peak demand on the grid.

As @MrSnrub and I pointed out, there is definitely no way to get an effective ROI on such a system up here in Quebec with our low utility rates (I used 13,340 kWh last year at a total of CA$910.80), so I would do it more for my own comfort and independence, and to be a little bit greener.

 

I had a charging incident this morning which required me to (unsuccessfully) use an Electrify America fast charger. The rate was $0.48/kWh and I pay $0.04/kWh for Level 2 at home on metered service, so 10x matches my experience. I guess the difference depends quite a bit on how low the home electrical rates are.

 

Yeah if I simply divide my annual total by the kilowatt-hours, it works out to something like 6.8¢ (Canadian), but that includes the 5-10% of the winter that I’m on the high rate, when it’s below -12°C (26.6¢/kWh plus fees and taxes), and thus when I’m most definitely not charging the car. My normal rate is apparently 4.542¢/kWh (Canadian) plus taxes since February 1, a slight increase over last year (indexed to inflation).

 

Have owned the SE for about 2 months shy of a year and have logged just over 25k miles. 99% of my charging is at home overnight on a hourly market cost plan.

Not including L3 charging costs, I've paid ComEd roughly $700 over my regular bill.

This equates to an average cost of about $0.028/kw, and with my average of 4.2miles/kw = 567mpg equivalent ($3.80gal here).

That same milage in a 50mpg Prius would cost about $1900, and over $4000 in my last car (avg 25mpg tuned Golf R, premium fuel) lol.

Also doesn't hurt to get "paid" to charge some days haha. Car is set to charge in the 1a.m-6.a.m. time slot.

 

4x at home is a great deal!
$0.48 for EA is not so good… around here it’s charged by the minute at 19c which on the Mini works out to around 25c per kWh, with a $4 per Mi the membership, which I’d get if I couldn’t charge at home, it drops to the equivalent of around $0.20c per kWh.
It’s interesting how much DCFC pricing differs across the country…

 

I forgot to plug my SE in overnight, and only had about 45% SoC for my morning commute of 42 miles one-way. So I figured I could go to EA for a quick fast charge, which is only about 6 miles from my house and directly on my commute route. Sadly for some reason I kept getting an error when the charging started, even trying more than one charger and getting help over the phone (reboot, remotely starting a charge). I decided it just wasn't my day and was forced to return home to switch to my Clubman for the day's drive.

I saw other EVs charging at the EA location, and I've successfully charged there previously. So now I'm somewhat concerned that there's a DCFC fault in my SE.

 

EA's issues are so frequent, I wouldn't assume it was a problem with the car until I'd tried at least 2 chargers that others had successfully used moments earlier.